WILL NEWT GINGRICH BE ABLE TO SUSTAIN HIS MOMENTUM AS THE CHIEF GOP ALTERNATIVE TO MITT ROMNEY ?...........

In recent weeks the latest manifestation of the Republican President nomination race, shows former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich of Georgia, has achieved a near come back from thew dead candidacy diring the summer and his abandonment by almost all his campaign staff; to running within the margin of error just behind, and now ahead, of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the putatative, presumed , GOP frontrunner.  Gingrich is the latest prospective alternative to Romney being the 2012 Republican Presidential Nominee.  He follows Donald Trump, Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, into the leading alternative position.  With just over a month before the start of the caucus and primary voting by Republicans, can Newt Gingrich sustain his alternative position and mount a truly serious challenge to Mitt Romney ?  Gingrich stands to gain from Herman Cain's recent slide, if evangelical Protestants can  be comfortable enough to transfer their electoral support from the embattled Cain, to the morally and ethically challenged Gingrich.  Those Republican evangelical Protestants must also be able to accept Gingrich's new found Catholicism, as much as they will Romney's Mormonism.  Despite the post conciliar, ecumenical age, in which we live, this remains a religious and political challenge to a certain percent of the potential electorate.  In what has to date been a volatile shifting of preferences for particular candidates among the eight of the ten Republicans seeking to be the 2012 Presidential standardbearer, Newt Gingrich will have to be articulately assertive and outreaching to remain a strong alternative to Mitt Romney through Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and Florida, after which a more accurate reading of where the race stands and how the nomination is likely to lean, becomes apparent...........Fr.  Troy